Walter Pincus Monday 7:57 AM C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" (NOW(!))

[Kolesar]

Tune in to Cspan 1 for a report on the intelligence leading to the Iraq Conquest. Pincus has done excellent reporting on this issue.

[Kolesar]

1. Pincus on nation building

...we have invaded a country whose culture is different than ours.

It took 150 years to develop our democracy, ...so you cannot say you can go in and establish a democracy militarily.

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Minority Sunni Muslims have been running the country. (Joining them) with the (oppressed) Shi'ite Moslems will be difficult. We must see what happens.

akin to Tito in Yugoslavia.

[Kolesar]

2. Regime change by isolating Saddam was one thing, (invasion) was another

Most Democrats are saying we cannot cut and run now.

[Kolesar]

3. 14 year veteran just returned from Iraq

the protest against the war: soldiers see this and wonder where the loyalty of the public is being laid.

Patriotism in America is becoming questionable. Flags after 9/11. Would like to see if it lasts.

Freedom--every freedom was not given by ...constitution, it was ensured by soldiers. Bill Maher made statement that American soldier is a coward.

This caller twisted what Maher said. Maher said leadership was cowardly, not the individual soldiers.
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Pincus: soldiers are fighting for American's rights to dissent/protest. In the case of US, we do have the right to protest. In Vietnam, many of the protesters were draftees, so they protested.

[rwork]

4. I heard him say.

We need to know if the administration was mislead by bad intelligence from the CIA? Why does the media have its head in the sand? "The bush* administration shaped the intelligence."

[Kolesar]

5. The white house will not dare to replace CIA director George Tenet

...because this will mean a round of hearings for the new nominee. (This will lead to the truth coming out and the administration is deathly afraid of having the truth come out --my comment)

These are the stories the media should focus on:

focus 1: did the administration exaggerate intelligence leading up to the war (?)
focus 2: What do we do now that we are occupying (a very unstable) Iraq.

[Snellius]

6. Here's a few excerpt hightlights:

Unedited closed caption transcription:

>> We'll go ahead and move on to louisville, kentucky. Good morning. Caller: Good morning. I wanted to ponet out that what we're seeing -- point out that we're we're seeing is monday morning quarterbacking. 9-11 did happen. We were invaded and 3,000 to 4,000 people were killed. There's every reason to believe that if those who brought that off could bring it off again would do it, we had no choicE. We had to stop to -- the next event would occur. You have to ask about the fervor of the people in the war and it has to do with the treatment of the israeli situation, the jews have been sucked into a situation where they're die, the palestinians are dying, let's get to the source of the problem. We did have 9-11, people did die, and there are people who would like to pull it off again. We had to react. We couldn't think about we hate war and all that stufF. That's it.

>> I think you'll find that one of the disagreements is, yes, 9-11 was a tragedy becaused by terrorists who had their own sort of ag enda. The question was -- there's been no connection made between saddam hussein and al qaeda and osama bin laden and 9-11, although the administration tried mightly to make that connection. And so you're going to see an argument that going to come forward which is by going into iraq you diverted going after the people who did 9-11, and you made the arab israeli conflict much more difficult, it has now broken apart and that is a result you'll see that some people feel happened because we went into iraq, their view, the view of the bush administration and the policymakers was, a, that if you get rid of saddam hussein, you get rid of the main supporter of the palestinians, and they would be much more likely to come to grips with an agreement with israel, and, secondly, by creating a democracy in the middle the middle east, you would have it spread throughout the area and democracies don't attack each other. It appears that that was a if he lasheus set -- a falasheus set of factors because it has been the opposite. American troops in iraq have drawn terrorist from all around the area, and that -- terrorists from all around the area, and that the so-called road map has been blown up along with everything else, so I think the caller is right that 9-11 was a terrible tragedy, but going into iraq was not a way to solve iT.
...

>> Next call, a few more minutes left with mr. Pincus, bronx, new york, you're on the aiR. Caller: I posed the war from the beginning. I -- I'm -- first of all, eem a vietnam vet -- first of all, I'm a vietnam vet, I'm disabled, and those of you who support the war, I don't think they've seen the war, they don't know the devastation of war, and i think that the people in iraq, i mean, we wanted to liberate them, but at the same time we have to remember that, you know, a lot of people died. We're talking about civilians, and I think what we did over there was make it fertile ground for terrorists, you know, and if we went in there to erase terrorism or whatever, i think we are on the wrong track and, anyway, good morning.

>> I think people should listen to what the caller said. I think that is a very impressive way to describe it from somebody who's been through it. We were in vietnam, richard helms, the former director of the c.I.A. In his sort of autobiography published after his death made it clear that one of his great concerns was that young americans went into vietnam not speaking the language, not understanding the history, but trying to bring something to that country, that the country wasn't prepared to accept, and it turned into a tragedy. And I think we have to watch out that the same thing doesn't happen again.

[Postman]

7. It still amazes me to no end how stupid, irrational and illogical some ..

American people can be. Even after the facts have been laid out in front of them. The non-sequiturs are astounding.